Having It All Page 3
After playing Nora for a decade, Hillary B. Smith has a good idea of who Nora is – or at least who she should be.Weekly: When you look back at Nora’s life over 10 years, does it seem believable? The brain tumor, the blindness…
Smith: All of that stuff I buy. I don’t buy walking into a cabana to have a baby with another man so you can present it to your husband because you love him so much. That I had a little trouble with. [From] there on, every day coming to work was a bit of a leap of faith.Weekly: The fans say Nora has changed; she’s not who she used to be. Do you agree with that?
Smith: They’re absolutely right. Understand something: She was in a train wreck and lost her memory. I don’t think she has a clue who she was. She remembers loving Bo. She doesn’t remember stepping into the cabana, and that’s a good thing, because if she remembered, she would not feel good about it. My character has been used to push story in certain directions. It’s a device, and you have to be careful with that device because it can cause damage to characters. There are some times when you’re asked to do things that you don’t agree with. I will be open and say there are a lot of things that my character has done that I tried to stop, that I haven’t agreed with. But bottom line is, I’m paid to do a job, and this is the job. I tell a story and it’s not my story, it’s their story, and I’m happy to do it because that’s my job. I’ve been doing it to the best of my ability, and sometimes in order to do it, you have to find a different side of the character that maybe didn’t exist before. Some fans like it, some don’t.Weekly: Where would Nora be if you wrote the show?
Smith: If I had gotten control of the story prior to the cabana, which is a story I pitched, I [would have had Nora] artificially inseminated with Asa’s sperm and have him say, “That’s it. You’re carrying a Buchanan.” She wouldn’t have had to sleep with Sam, and she wouldn’t have slept with Asa. And she wouldn’t have violated her marriage. There were stretches all along the way made to promote that Sam and Nora union, to make sure that Sam had a child on the show. They wanted to break up Bo and Nora, but more importantly, they wanted to give Sam a foothold into the show…that particular administration did.Weekly: Do you still get a lot of letters asking for Nora and Bo to be reunited?
Smith: You tell me. Weekly: We don’t get as many anymore.
Smith: I don’t know if that means they don’t care anymore, or whether they’re happy with the other pairings. I loved my days with Bo; Bo and Nora were great. As you can tell, my wall is covered with [pictures of them]. I absolutely adored it. It was a wonderful time. I have even submitted ideas for Bo and Nora, but everyone can sit there and armchair-quarterback. When you’re trying to write a show that has umpteen number of characters, and you’re trying to do what’s best for the whole show, I bow to their better judgment. It’s not my place; I have no writing control. I do what I do, which is take what they give me and try and make it as believable as I possibly can. And I get a lot of flak from the fans.Weekly: What do they say?
Smith: They think that one or the other of us doesn’t want to do it. I don’t think one person has that much control over anything, and I certainly don’t. I will only speak for myself – it’s not me. If you want to know anything else, go ask Bob Woods (Bo). When the time is right, maybe they’ll make a decision to put them back, or maybe they won’t. I do want to stress the difficulty in writing a show of this size, and I totally appreciate that. I don’t want to sit there and take potshots at the show. It’s simple when I haven’t had to sit up there and write it.
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